


la casa del bosque

by iimpavid, scarebeast



Series: transmogrification [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Armed Robbery, Developing Relationship, Dreams and Nightmares, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, On the Run, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Psychic Abilities, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-25 23:10:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15650859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid, https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarebeast/pseuds/scarebeast
Summary: “Don’t lie to yourself. You know who you are. I know who you are. I’ve always known.” Abigail still wouldn’t quite look at him, but she looked like she wanted to. Her eyes kept flickering in his direction. Her throat bled red into the water as she spoke, each breath disrupting the stream just a little. “He knows, too.”





	la casa del bosque

**Author's Note:**

> We're so glad you've returned to join us for the second "episode" of our season 4 AU. Please keep in mind that the Tattlecrime articles posted between episodes aren’t optional; if you’re following the plot you’ll want to see what Freddie’s up to for things to make sense!

“It’s been a long time since you’ve been back here, Will,” Abigail observed as she cast her line out into the water. Will watched her face but she didn’t look at him.

“I didn’t have a reason to come back.” He almost didn’t recognize his own voice.

“Don’t lie to yourself. You know who you are. I know who you are. I’ve always known.” Abigail still wouldn’t quite look at him, but she looked like she wanted to. Her eyes kept flickering in his direction. Her throat bled red into the water as she spoke, each breath disrupting the stream just a little. “He knows, too.”

“Yes, I know that.” Will cast his line out.

There were never any fish when he was here, nothing to catch, but that wasn’t quite the point of the fishing. He said, as if Abigail had asked him the question, “It’s about the peace. The tranquility. We’re here because we can cast our lines out and revel in the passivity of it. Catching things isn’t the point.” He thought his line might tangle with Abigail’s and they would deal with it when the time came.

Abigail exhaled beside him and leaned close to press her head against his shoulder. Will stiffened, but she didn’t move, just curled an arm around his back. “You’re gonna have to wake up soon, Dad. We can’t stay here forever. You’re gonna have to wake up and live with who you are.”

He felt it before it even began its approach, before it announced itself with heavy steps that shuddered the riverbottom and didn’t so much as disturb the flow of the water. Only the quiet noise of legs dragging through an inexorable stream. The stag nuzzled against his palm, its muzzle soft and impossibly warm, tickling peach fuzz and humid breath.

“I went with Hannibal because I thought we could all be happy together. I wanted... I don’t know what I wanted, not really, there were so many possibilities..” Abigail finally looked up at him. Her neck had bled on his shoulder, and his shirt was covered in a swathe of the darkest of blacks. “I guess I thought we could be a family. I really wanted that.”

“But you’re dead and I might as well be,” he said and the truth was cruel. “I tried to get back to you the best way I knew how.”

“Yeah, I know. It just isn’t time yet. Or maybe this is just God’s punishment for you.”

He considered that. But with Abigail pressed against his shoulder and the ravenstag pressing into his hand, he wasn’t sure he believed it. He stroked the stag’s muzzle, turned his cheek to the nothing-texture of Abigail’s hair. “If it’s a punishment, it’s not a very good one.”

Can’t live with him, can’t live without him, Bedelia had said.

Abigail dropped her fishing pole and wrapped her arms around him.

“I forgive you,” she said.

He gasped when she pressed herself further into him, his ribs creaking and cracking, making space for her inside of his chest. An impossible betrayal of form that brought him to his knees in the shallows as his skin split and he broke around her. She pressed further and he curled his arms around her back, grasping at her shirt and hissing out in pain as she brought herself to live in the space she carved out between his ribs where his lungs used to be.

Will crawled forward, cried out as the dragon's talons slashed across his legs.

The water beneath him was turning black now with blood and gore and viscera from the dragon's throat and belly where Will and Hannibal had opened him to the world. Even in death the dragon wouldn’t allow Francis to rest-- it was screaming. A venomous noise that Will couldn't parse-- it rang in his ears, a piercing through his skull and down to tear into his chest from the inside out. An unholy din.

The trees flamed around him as Will dragged himself through the river, up onto the concrete patio of Hannibal’s cliffside house.

The shadowy shape of the ravenstag pushed itself in front of him and Will let it, watched it take the brunt of the dragon’s attack and gore the dragon over and over, antlers dripping viscous ink, until the dragon was pinned to the flagstones beneath it, writhing and immobile.

Will closed his eyes.

Jack's office was darker than usual, blinds drawn tight over the windows.

"All we can presume as of right now is that they're dead. I won't hear anything else. There's no evidence to suggest any other outcome. There's nothing else we can do here. Nothing until we see one of them somewhere. Case closed. We're shutting the idea down for good, and I don't want to hear or see Freddie Lounds."

Will couldn't see Jack, could only hear his voice as it rebounded against the walls of his mind like an invocation: They’e dead. They’re dead. They’re dead.

"Authenticity," Jack said, and Will agreed.

Will opened his eyes.

Hannibal sat at a harpsichord in the dark. His fingers flew over the ebony keys as though he were breathing music into existence. It was a haunting melody, made more so by the choice of implement, like death by asphyxiation; overbrimming with immediacy and underscored by the oncoming unknown. Perfect for Hannibal.

Hannibal smiled at him and offered an explanation, "Jean-Phillipe Rameau. A baroque composer who wrote three books of pièces de clavecin. This particular piece is called L'entretien des Muses; it is one of my favorites." He didn’t stop playing to speak, "I never did play for you. I did mean to after you were acquitted of my crimes, but we never quite got that far, did we?"

The piece seemed to go on forever. It made Will anxious to hear it; the swell and sway ever-growing without even leaning toward resolution. Just like Hannibal, who would arch into the dissonance of his own hands with relentless fervor until the day he died.

"Perhaps, if you ask me, I'll play for you when you wake."

The music continued and Will sat in the darkness and let it flow over him, until finally, finally, it reached its zenith. He didn't hear Hannibal get up or leave.

When he opened his eyes he was alone with Garret Jacob Hobbs standing in front of him, reaching a hand out to press a finger against Will's forehead.

"You've come such a long way. You see. You see more. You don't have to be scared anymore. Just open your eyes. Open them all the way."

The finger bored into the center of his forehead and Will couldn't move to struggle against the pain The skin opened and fresh, hot life spilled out into Will's eyes, but he didn't need them anymore because now he could see without them. The void stretched vast, vacillating between shades of volume and stillness.

Will had never wanted to see, let alone see this far. Never wanted to see this. He'd tried so hard for so long to never find himself here on this edge between the real and the known, to end up sliding over the precipice of the fathomable-- but there was no going back now.

* * *

 

**March 18 - 8:30 a.m.**

 

Tracking Hannibal was never an easy task and Will Graham made him all the more unpredictable. Will Graham made a ruin of the carefully-cultivated stability necessary for Hannibal to maintain his facade of civility and his desired level of comfort. Will Graham was both Hannibal's singular greatest ally and singular greatest threat to his continued existence.

At Hannibal's cliffside house-- a family asset that had wandered far from the Lecter name but not its holdings-- she was careful to walk across the wood flooring in stocking feet and disturb nothing. By her own modest estimation she was a half-day ahead of the FBI and the clock was ticking.

The blood spatter in the living room sketched out a dance, circling and measured. A waltz, if she were pressed to decide on one. Elegant and only just restrained from the edge of hedonism--

Then in the courtyard, still circling, the spatter became thick trails of a hunter's carnage centered on a corpse, already drawing flies, its intestines spilled free. The leavings of a pack of wolves.

Did solitary, packless animals, those rejected and proven antisocial, ever find themselves hunting together in the wild?

Chiyoh didn’t know enough about wolves to form any conclusions on the matter. She stood at the edge of the bluff and stared down, bracing against the vertigo of it until the waves and height no longer played tricks with her equilibrium.

* * *

 

In the early spring sun she leaned against her new panel van (new to her; a great many Americans on craigslist would let their possessions go for cash, no questions asked) and scrolled through current maps and tide tables on her phone. The phone was actually new and its case was a concession to childish nostalgia-- a silicone Totoro, complete with ears and whiskers. It fit just barely in the inside pocket of her coat but she forced it in there anyway. She had work to do, bodies to bury.

The first stretch of accessible shoreline she came to had no corpses but the tide had not yet washed away the spray of blood and brain matter or the tracks of bodies dragged through the gravel.

Hannibal had left a terribly sloppy scene.

She walked along the path he’d taken, presumably twice, and kicked at the gravel and sand, raking fresh over tracks-- hers and her brother's-- with her boots. It would obscure their trail somewhat until the tide took care of the details. If the FBI were close behind her then this might delay them an hour or two.

She walked and dragged her feet and kicked and breathed as deeply as she could. The alternative was hyperventilating. The alternative was throwing up. She had come to collect bodies then find home but Hannibal and Will Graham were not dead.

She made a remarkable, memorable sight, wandering the rocky strand in figure-eights, shuffling her feet and watching the sky.

Movement caught her eye. A warm splash of color darting behind an outcropping of rock.

Chiyoh drew the Ruger from its holster at the small of her back, mouth turned down in a displeased moue-- her silencer was still in the van.

She pursued with efficient quickness, the waves' thunder giving her the illusion of silence.

She heard scrabbling along the rocks-- an animal, not a person-- and then saw the dog. It wasn't a young animal, going grey around the muzzle, but it was still strong. Its coat was stiff with salt water. It barked, half-whined, and approached her on its belly, watching the gun. There was blood spatter along its side but not its own.

She sighed and returned her pistol to its holster at the small of her back. The dog flinched away. It was a clever dog, then, to recognize a gun from just the one trauma. Overshadowing her admiration, Chiyoh felt the flinch like a physical blow.

"No, no, it's alright," she told it, voice lilting in a way that was impossible to avoid when talking to animals or frightened children. She held out her hand, palm up. The dog didn't move.

She hunkered there on the shore, her coat fanned out behind her on the damp sand. She watched the dog. The dog watched her back. She had no food with which to coax it and leaving it here would be as good as a signpost for the direction Hannibal and Will had taken, if not better. It's collar was pink and studded with rhinestones. This animal was loved and would almost certainly be microchipped.

Inspiration struck her: the van’s previous owner had left jerky in the glovebox.

It took another twenty minutes of soft whistling and one-sided conversation to convince the golden retriever that she was a friend. Chiyoh petted the dog in firm, long strokes and sat there in the sun with it until it stopped trembling. It took less time than she might have thought. Animals felt a wide range of emotions but they could be assuaged easily enough.

"It’s nice to meet you, Holly," she said fondly as she turned the dog's ID tags over in one hand and stroked her soft ears with the other, "Your address isn't far from here. Shall we go home?"

Holly cocked her head. Her tail thumped against the ground in a weakly hopeful expression.

"Yes, I think we shall. But you must be patient. I have a few errands to run first."

With gentle fingers, Chiyoh led Holly to the van. Holly chose to ride shotgun, her head resting on the console so she could stare up at Chiyoh.

* * *

 

Medical supply outlets were never plentiful but Chiyoh found herself deeply annoyed at having to drive fifty miles to fine one now. The internet was the bane of such small businesses.

In the parking lot she patted Holly's head and gently pushed her down into the footwell, leaning the passenger seat forward as far as it could go. "I know this is uncomfortable, but you must stay quiet and out of sight. You are too conspicuous."

Holly sighed and curled around herself, her tail flopped over her nose. The retriever's fur was a mess. She would need a bath as soon as possible to be made presentable again.

Chiyoh smiled down at her then, turning her collar up and fluffling her scarf, left, not locking the van behind her.

* * *

 

Bob Kahl had been a pharmacist for twenty years. It’d been his dream job growing up; he’d set up a dispensary with his mother’s spice rack in the kitchen as a game more than once. He was incredibly good at his job, taking great satisfaction in confirming pill counts, sorting filled prescriptions, outlining side effects for patients, and telling angry opioid addicts that they would have to wait for the time-delay safe for their drugs.

A huge part of his training was about junkies and the ways in which they might attempt to hold up the pharmacy. His job did not prepare him for being robbed this politely.

“I will need you to give me the items I have listed here immediately or the consequences will be … unfortunate.”

"I'm sorry-- what?"

She nudged the slip of paper closer to him over the countertop. "Do you know how to read english? If need be, I can translate into something else."

She smiled at him but her eyes were blank. The oversized reusable grocery bag over her shoulder was full of IV and suture kits and syringes and triage equipment. The one on the counter was empty. The note in his hand instructed him to fill it with bags of saline and levofloxacin, vials of adrenaline and lidocaine, an alarming amount of percocet and, of all things, ibuprofen.

"I don't know who you think--"

"I will start with your intern if you don't cooperate."

And then Frank the intern, in a moment of glorious stupidity of which only pharmacology interns are capable, twitched a hand toward the silent alarm on the underside of the counter. Before he could activate it, a neat hole appeared through his head. He collapsed forward, face-first into his register, then to the floor. Bob only saw the woman move when she leveled the silenced barrel of her gun at him.

One customer was in line behind the robber. She drew a breath to scream and the robber said, stern and commanding, "You’d do well to remain silent. I don’t want to kill more of you so please do not put me in that position." She did not blink once as she spoke, only stared at Bob, waiting.

The smell of urine reached his nose before he realized he had wet himself.

"Bob, you don’t need to be afraid," she said, with gentleness that finally reached her eyes, before she explained herself in an even meter: "I could kill you now and get these things for myself, but I would prefer to leave without further bloodshed or delay. I am in a great hurry. Can you please help me?"

* * *

 

Chiyoh's alarm was the default ringtone for her phone, instantly recognizable, and it went off as she was exiting the supply store with full bags.

She silenced the alarm and pressed the phone to her ear, speaking to herself in Japanese, answering questions that weren't being asked by anyone-- yes, she had acquired the drugs; yes, she would be able to meet them in Bangor; no, she would no be followed by the FBI. The security guard hung on her every word without understanding more than she planned.

She drove the van in the opposite direction of Holly's home address, obeying every American traffic law, only pulling over after fifteen minutes to trade plates with a plumber's panel van parked outside a cul-de-sac.

The rain began shortly after the robbery and continued long after. Chiyoh drove two miles below the speed limit and ground her teeth and did not reach the address listed on Holly's collar until well after noon. As they drove up the lane-- winding and far from other houses, all but buried in forest, a convenience that could not have possibly been planned, not even by Hannibal-- Holly grew agitated. She shuffled in the passenger seat and whined. Her tail lashed, slapping the door, seatback, and Chiyoh as she tried to pace in place.

The second Chiyoh opened her door, the dog forced herself out of the van first, leaping to the ground and bounding up the front steps of the house to scrabble at the door and bark. The trunk of the Honda beside her in the driveway was popped. The corpse in it was slowly growing damp from the rain.

Chiyoh looked to the house's porch-- and Holly on it, pacing and upset-- and then back to the dead man. She heaved him over her shoulder and, with all the grace that one might throw a sack of potatoes, threw him into the back of her van and slammed the doors shut.

The front door was locked, but the kitchen door at the back of the house was not. If Hannibal was here he must either be grievously injured or dead to neglect such a basic form of security. Or he was perfectly fine and simply lying in wait--

Holly shouldered into the house ahead of her and Chiyoh gave the dog up as a lost cause. Either Hannibal would kill her or he would not.

Holly trotted from room to room, sniffing at perimeters with her head swaying side to side. She stopped briefly in the living room to consider Hannibal and Will Graham-- both of them were unconscious and breathing and had not been cleaned thoroughly enough of the blood on their hands.

Chiyoh left the dog to her own devices and set about turning the hat rack in the front entry way into an IV stand for them.

* * *

**March 18 -4:00 p.m.**

 

Will was borne back into consciousness on a wave of inarticulate sensation. His entire body felt like a raw nerve, overexposed and dripping and too much because his last coherent thought had been the genius idea of throwing them into the Atlantic. That was the real bitch; if he was in pain, he was alive. If he was alive, then Hannibal (there was no guessing, no doubt who that someone had been) had pulled him somewhere that was warm and out of the spray of the sea.

He wished he had drowned.

His shoulder, and his face, they hurt the worst. The entire right side of his face was hot and wrong, and he couldn't quite get his eye to open when he tried. He opened his left to an unfamiliar room.

It was a cabin, maybe, someone's vacation home? Too small for that, but it was clearly new to them, boxes still tucked away in corners-- although a great many had been dumped out unceremoniously-- the room not looking entirely set up, shelves emptied of whatever trinkets might be placed there. Will took stock of his own body. He was bare-chested, the wound in his shoulder stitched tidily and there was a needle pressed into his arm, IV draining steadily into him.

Will swallowed and closed his eye again. It was hard to concentrate and focus on the space around him, let alone try to make sense of what had happened. He opened it again, stricken with an overwhelming, visceral fear that Hannibal was dead. But then he looked and Hannibal was right there on the floor beside the sofa breathing with the steadiness of deep sleep. Relief stuttered the breath in his chest. Hannibal was hooked up to an IV, too, and death-pale and looking worse than Will had ever seen him. The sight Hannibal unconscious and vulnerable drew something in him taught.

It was difficult to reach down-- what with the pain and stiffness in his shoulder and he knew he shouldn't move, should just relax and lie still until Hannibal woke again and could tell him what was going on, what had happened-- but Will stretched his arm out and touched Hannibal's throat. His pulse beat under his fingertips and Will’s breath left him in a sharp sigh of relief.

The movement drew Holly's attention; for the first time in hours the dog turned away from the house's front door and looked at Will as if she recognized something in him.

"You should try to relax," Chiyoh advised. Will startled and fought to prop himself up-- just in time to see standing up from the pile of Bellamy Reymes' belongings she'd been sorting through in eerie silence. "I won't be able to give you a transfusion until tomorrow at the soonest." A strip of medical tape held a cotton ball tight to her left median cubital vein, matching the bandaging on Hannibal's. She had given him two pints before she had felt faint and his blood pressure was still too low.

Her overcoat and shirt were hanging to try before the heating vent in the bathroom; the house was poorly insulated and she, like Hannibal and Will, made due with Bellamy Reymeys' leavings. She was positively swimming in the argyle sweater she'd found. She hoped to keep it after this if it wouldn't be too inconspicuous. In the kitchen, she had started a stew of legumes and canned meat the house's former owner had stored. One of the few things she could manage in the kitchen with any reliability was soup of all kinds (although she preferred canned; less effort). It would be a bland meal, but it would be rich in iron.

Will cleared his throat. His mouth still tasted of his own blood, rich salt and iron, and he longed to rinse his mouth out, brush his teeth, to shower off the itch of opioids and sickness. Creature comforts. There was only one way to find out how much it was going to hurt when he opened his mouth to speak.

He remembered speaking to Hannibal, after they had slain the dragon, but he hadn't been able to feel much of anything then, riding the high of adrenaline, the ecstacy of the hunt. It hadn’t hurt to speak then.

"How. How'd you find..." He trailed off, squeezing his eyes shut. Acutely he felt gauze passing the inside of his cheek, the aching ruin of his gums that felt swollen and dumbed his tongue’s ability to form words. The scar was going to be rather defining.

"Holly," she told him and pointed to the dog.

The retriever stood up at her name and padded over, sitting beside Hannibal's head and stretching over him to sniff at Will. She was clean now, smelling of her former master's shampoo and wearing one of his sweaters-- Google had told Chiyoh that the sensations might help calm her and so she'd tried it. Better than having the dog howling for days on end.

Will let his hand fall towards the dog, letting her sniff him and gave her a crooked smile. "Hey, Holly."

It was almost normal, even a little absurd because the dog, too, was in a sweater just like Chiyoh and Hannibal. She didn't look at him like he was fragile or monstrous; she didn't know to look at him like that. Dogs and their unconditional love. It felt like home.

He was more surprised that Chiyoh hadn’t killed him than that she was there-- after all, it’d be easier to dispatch of him and tell Hannibal he’d died of his wounds. In her shoes, it’s what he would have done.

But then, Chiyoh was not the same sort of monster as he.

"Water. Please."

Monosyllables were more manageable than manners and Chiyoh seemed to understand this. She left for the kitchen with a hammer and returned with a wooden bowl full of crushed ice in one hand and a new tube of cherry chapstick in the other. "I don't know that you should have water yet-- a straw would damage your mouth further and I have you on fluids. These should help, though."

He let his hand slide over Holly’s snout and head for a moment and then swallowed and steeled himself to sit up with a groan. He felt nauseous immediately, something hot and ugly roiling in his stomach and leaving his head throbbing fuzzily. He was desperate for something to wet his mouth with but he wasn't certain now that he could open it without vomiting.

Chiyoh watched his face turn a yellowish shade with a twinge of sympathy. "There is an empty bucket behind you. And dramamine on the table, if you think you can keep it down."

She had not thought to pick up intravenous antiemetics and felt a twinge of regret for her future self. On the floor her brother stirred and she checked his IV line, flushed it with saline to make sure it was clear-- but he wasn't, regrettably, due for more sedatives. She sighed to herself and drifted back to the kitchen, leaving Will Graham to his nausea and Hannibal to whatever wakefulness he might manage.

* * *

 

Infection had a bitter smell, even in its earliest stages. Hannibal, with growing awareness, could not habituate to it or the sour-sharp and cloyingly sweet smells of medications that were dripping into him. Given time and a clear head-- one that did not throb and burn with the tilting weight of vertigo-- he might be able to identify the exact medications given him.

He catalogued the room slowly, knowing that moving too much too soon would do him no good. Rosewater with gunpowder; Chiyoh. A tightness in his chest loosened with his next breath; he had certainly slept in hospitals this uncomfortable before but this was not FBI custody, at least. Sandalwood and sweat; Will. Murmuring and conscious. The dog whose amassed scents were no more pleasant than they’d been on the beach. Farther away, boiling beans with too little seasoning and too few additional vegetables that would burn if left unattended much longer.

That made him open his eyes. The naked beams of the ceiling were spotlit by lamps scattered around the open main floor; there was little furniture here, he remembered. Chiyoh would have had to do unpacking for their dearly-departed host. The lights spun. Rain sluiced down the roof in a constant thrumming susurrus, the morning’s storm in full swing, and without a clock it was impossible to guess at the time.

"You think too loudly, Will," he found himself saying. The blankets Chiyoh had layered over him did not feel adequate; it was as if he still floated below the surface of the Atlantic, the pressure too heavy to swim through and the cold sinking straight through him.

Chiyoh finding them at all before they had died of their wounds was a double-edged sword. It meant they could be found and with relative ease.

The dog, he thought again, suddenly understanding that she must have found it first. The realization of his failure in that regard sat leaden in his stomach. He did not recall why he hadn’t killed it.

The dog stood over him but shied away as he pressed himself upright, careful to use his arms and avoid aggravating the fresh stitches in his belly and back. He could hardly feel them to monitor their stability. His skin felt like radio static instead, undefined edges bleeding into the ether. The room slowed its drunken reel when he looked up at Will. Will, who was sitting alert, eyes bright and gears turning already. He was breathing heavily, deep into his belly against a bout of nausea. His right cheek distended and he remembered, vaguely, stuffing sterile gauze and cotton into the space between his ruined cheek and gum to keep them from choking him on blood.

"We will need to change out the packing in your cheek, soon, if Chiyoh has not done so already. And there will be teeth to pull," he added with an aborted gesture meant to signify... he wasn't certain what, exactly. The second realization broke over him: he was not in full control of his mental faculties or his tongue and dull irritation at Chiyoh settled into the back of his mind.

Will couldn’t take his eyes off of Hannibal. He didn’t want to. “We’re alive. How are we alive? Did you pull me out of the water?”

He held Will's gaze. Would have dove into the blue of his irises if such a thing were possible. Both of them were bright-eyed with their nearness to death, flush with survival as much as fever. Life was its own sort of infection.

"I am a capable swimmer in rescue scenarios, " he told Will, cadance even despite the haze of opiates and fever, "and the currents were in our favor. We are not terribly far from where you took us over but we are if you will forgive the imprecision far enough. For now, at least."

He reached up and took ice from the bowl Chiyoh had left on the sofa, one hand pressed to his abdomen to keep the stitches there from pulling even while the ones in his back stretched in protest. He chewed the ice thoughtfully; this house was on well water and it had a higher concentration of heavy metal than was strictly recommended

"We would have remained on the beach where we came ashore but, as fate would have it, the man who either owns or rents this house stumbled upon us."

“How’s the hip?” Will asked, pushing another piece of ice into his mouth even though it didn’t seem to make him any less thirsty. “You look.... Faded.”

“What a poetic choice of words, my dear Will. Unfortunately, my abdomen will likely not heal," he corrected as he explained, a gentle and fond tutor, "my liver and kidneys are intact enough that they’re functional and I’ve not bled out but I cannot guarantee the same for my large intestine. It is probable that this is one of my last lucid moments before death by septicemia begins in earnest."

He could accept that this would be his last earthly conversation, even be glad of dying having last spoken with Will, but there was an undertow of existential regret: his corpse would be poisoned, inedible.

“You won’t die.”

“Have you developed the capacity to see the future, Will? Or perhaps you mean to ensure my survival through willpower alone?”

Hannibal smiled; it was a genuine thing, confined almost entirely to his eyes as he teased. Will thought about the dreams he’d swum up from not ten minutes before. Maybe Hannibal saw more than he knew.

“But I agree, Will. Septicemia is … pedestrian. I had rather hoped you would be the one to kill me; had you hoped the same?”

"I did. For a while."

The statement unwound in Hannibal’s chest with rapid release. He had wanted Will to kill him. He thought about it often in the long, drawn quiet of the asylum. What weapon Will might choose (never a gun certainly, but perhaps the knife he gutted fish with, or, if Hannibal was very lucky, his bare hands). What they might say to each other (there would be little left to say but he thought Will would make him so proud). What they might feel (relief, bliss, completion).

Part of him had planned it for that night on the cliffside. He thought Will might bide his time and he’d certainly seemed to, letting Hannibal pour their wine, enjoying the view. Will was the rarest of flowers, a titan arum slow to bloom and coveted and awe-inspiring on the basest levels. Intoxicating.

He imagined Will wandering while they talked and he, himself, sat, comfortable and content, in an armchair. The subject matter was insubstantial. What was important was that Will, in this fantasy, found himself circling closer and closer in throughout their conversation. That Hannibal allowed it. Right up to the point that Will could not take the waiting bubbling up beneath his skin and lunged to strangle him.

He thought he might put up a fight and take Will to his grave with him.

He thought he might simply relax and watch Will watching him die.

In either case, he ended up with blood in his teeth— Will’s, his own— and Will’s thumbs pressing inexorably up beneath his jaw until they found his hyoid bone —compression on the carotid and jugular would be secondary concerns. Will might even consciously avoid it as much as he could. To keep him awake and feel Hannibal’s pulse under his palms, steady and hard then fluttering then stuttering then still— then, tracing the delicate arch of his hyoid, pressing tighter and tighter until pressure and angle and bloodlust snapped it. His trachea would collapse at the base of his tongue. Blood vessels burst in his eyes. His last breath would taste of pinot noir and Will— salt and soap and sandalwood and iron—

He would suffocate with Will on his tongue as he swallowed it; his vision greying at the edges. The heat and numbness would be unbearable and back-arching and he could not be able to stop the instinctual grasp for help and leverage, clawing at Will’s forearms, up into his hair.

In this fantasy, Hannibal felt the euphoric pain of his heart grinding to a halt.

In this fantasy, Will did not let go until Hannibal was dead.

Hannibal blinked, refocusing on the present. He was certain they were still in Maryland. The comforter Chiyoh had given Will was brown and patterned with bright pink hyacinths. As if there had been no pause in their conversation, he asked, “What changed your mind? In the end?”

Will stared in fascination. Hannibal unguarded was not a sight he was privy to often, if ever. It took nearly everything Will had not to slip into the daydream alongside him.

"I didn't change my mind. I made a different decision.” The distinction was important. Desperate, he sought an end-- to Hannibal, to himself, to what they had done and had yet to do. It had become clear to him that he liked the world better with Hannibal in it and the solution to that was simple. “I was still trying to kill you when I took us both off the cliff."

“Allow me to clarify: I’m not... arrogant enough to presume that killing me would be a requisite for your suicide. What changed your mind about surviving our encounter with The Great Red Dragon?”

Will gave him a flat look. Hannibal had no tells but the lie was palpable nonetheless. Hannibal was nothing if not overwhelmingly arrogant. "What changed your mind about killing me after Muskrat?"

“I realized that if I killed you, my life would become indescribably—” The loss for words was perhaps a consequence of the sedatives or fever or the overwhelming font of emotion that Will’s existence provoked. Hannibal paused then tried again— “There is only so much tedium a person can survive alone. And, while eating you would be the culminating pleasure of my life, causing your death has since become unconscionable.”

Will picked at the blanket on his lap, tugging a little at the loose threads of hyacinths. "You just answered your own question then. I don't think I can try to kill you anymore."

“And this conviction led us over the cliffside,” he mused, then admonished, “You are not a passive killer, Will. Without levees, dams, canals there are too many ways a river might break its banks and run awry.” Then, after a beat, a small horror occurred to him and continued to bloom out from his lungs: “Do you still intend to die?”

"I'm not suicidal.” He sounded defensive, desperate. “I didn't want to live without you and now I know I can't so we're together now and that's it."

“Will.” He said it softly, just for the pleasure of saying it, lightheaded from more than fever. “Forgive me for having asked; I have learned, with you, it is best not to assume. You defy prediction and classification.”

Will turned away from the heavy gaze Hannibal had on him, cleared his dry throat one more time as if it would help. The scar stretching across his stomach itched.

"You should rest some more. We both should. Get our strength back. We'll have to leave soon."

The dismissal jarred Hannibal but he rolled into it with a polite look of concern. He reminded himself: this is not a rejection. “Of course. But more importantly, I must rescue the lentils that Chiyoh has spent the evening torturing before they’re entirely unsalvageable.” It did not hurt him to stand, although his back gave weak protest, standing required him to lean on the sofa for leverage and he savored the opportunity to lean over Will, just for a moment.

* * *

 

**March 27 - 6:15 a.m.**

“No.”

Will had spent most of his recovering hours anticipating this argument. He'd known that Hannibal would dig his heels in. He followed Hannibal out to the car, steadier on his feet and using that advantage to step in front of him. "You murdered her owner. She's got no one left now; I’m not going to just leave her. Who knows what could happen to her?"

Hannibal reached around him and closed the truck of Bellamy Reymeys' inconspicuously taupe sedan. He had not accounted at all for the space necessary to bring a dog with them nor did he consider the unique challenges that the dog would present in terms of forensic clean-up. He certainly was not prepared to tolerate an indeterminable amount of time in a compact car smelling the dog's breath. "Holly will scavenge and, if she's clever, she will hunt. Eventually, she will make her way toward town and be taken in by a shelter or perhaps a charming family whose brats require a new toy."

Will didn't have much of an argument prepared in favor of Holly's continued presence. There was no reasoning to it, other than he liked her, that he felt bad that her owner had needed to die. Abandoning her, even as a thought exercise, seized hold of something in him and twisted. It hurt to think of leaving another dog like he’d left his pack. Like he’d left his family.

He didn’t let Hannibal sidestep him. He made eye contact. "Please, Hannibal."

He exhaled slowly to give himself time to get his exasperation under control. "The dog is this important to you already." At least the dog's hair was already in the car. A creature that couldn't self-regulate its emotions certainly couldn't be expected to disguise itself. “We won't be leaving the car in this county, then; she is too friendly and recognizable.”

Will's fingers twitched and he just went for it, settling a hand on Hannibal's shoulder and tugging at him a little with affection. "Thank you."

Hannibal could taste the residual blood on Will's breath and the coffee he drank in lieu of breakfast. "You're very welcome, Will,” he said and found he meant it. “Work on her obedience training."

Will smiled. "Don't worry about that. Are we ready to go now? I think Chiyoh's about had enough of babysitting us." She was a godsend, but Will could tell that she was tired of them. Living in self-enforced isolation for so long meant real people got exhausting pretty quickly.

"I finished bleaching ... everything," Chiyoh told them as they came in. Chlorine fumes hung in the air despite the open windows. “If you two manage not to be seen I think you’ll survive until the southern border.”

“Your confidence in our skills is inspiring.”

“I left $50K in small bills between your clothes and his. Behave, mieloji,” this last she directed at Hannibal who gave her a wan smile-- already he was weary and travel wouldn’t prove to be a kindness-- and promised, “Always.”

She couldn’t have peeled out of the gravel driveway any faster.

“I knew she would like you,” Hannibal said pulling on a pair of nitrile gloves before going to give the kitchen one last inspection to clean surfaces they may have touched. “Are you particularly attached to any of our host’s belongings? Now is the time to decide.”

"I already took the fishing gear. Don't think there's anything else we should really take. This is suspicious enough." It wasn’t quite true but the forest house was thin. It was old but had no remembered history and, for him, it had no context except that of another doorway to pass through en route to elsewhere. Will hated liminal spaces as a rule. He was ready to leave. Ready to leave behind the dead man who begged to know why he’d had to die.

**Author's Note:**

> [Check out the ongoing series soundtrack here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLO98SuiduiAezMGzG3iFmKm2UzBtNWyxJ)
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